journal for new poetry
Timothy Donnelly
Beauport
To wax a brick floor, pour a small amount of wax
in the middle of a four-by-four-foot portion of the floor
and buff it with a mechanized buffer outfitted with a heavy-duty pad.
Continue applying and buffing wax like this in squares until
the floor is finished. This floor is finished; these ceilings
low; and temporal vibrations complicate the airspace like the lines
decorating the Nailsea glass, pulled and combed repeatedly
for that feathery effect, the pattern on it not unlike the harbor’s
choppy surface bouncing evening sunlight through the dozens
of clear panels in the arabesque but simple window of the Master
Mariner’s Room, whose floor is made of wood in wide unfinished planks as if
a vessel set in motion by the wind. The word whim may derive from
the Old Norse for “to let the eyes wander,” and that’s exactly
what they do: charts, sextants, compasses; polished whalebone
pointers; books in all shapes and sizes, including a sort of scrollable tablet
I’d meant to look at more closely but didn’t; framed prints
in a child’s style; a shelf of decoys, carved soldiers, and what might
be a bronze coelacanth all lined up as in a class portrait, or like a troupe
rehearsing in this space constructed in hopes that the sea captains of Gloucester
would want to hold their meetings here, but they weren’t interested.